


A Person in Two Parts

by ryssabeth



Series: Novelesque Diary [6]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, University
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-16
Updated: 2013-02-16
Packaged: 2017-11-29 13:14:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/687359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ryssabeth/pseuds/ryssabeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Half-a-person is no kind of person at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Person in Two Parts

Casual affection isn’t something that Enjolras has had the opportunity to master over the course of his life. Touches, yes. Hands-on-shoulders, nudges, shoves, even, on occasion. But he’s never exactly had the opportunity to master the art of embraces, or casual caresses on a wrist, or brushing his fingers on the back of a neck. And so when he stretches his legs out beneath the small table in his own kitchen where they’re studying (or, at the very least, where _Enjolras_ is studying) and their ankles brush, he almost flinches away.

Grantaire, for his part, tenses, his pencil stopping a sweeping line, and he glances up, meeting Enjolras’ eyes with an arched brow and a small smile.

And then his foot tips, resting against Enjolras’, and he can breathe again.

“Are you trying to proposition me, Apollo? Because there are easier was to distract me from work.” He grins, plopping his chin in his hand, dropping his pencil against his notebook. “Like chewing on the end of a pen, for instance.”

“ _This_ again?” (But Enjolras doesn’t mind—hasn’t forgotten that Grantaire mentioned it to him). “I told you, I never try to get your attention.”

“That’s the beauty of it,” Grantaire’s posture changes again, resting his cheek against his knuckles, picking up his pencil, and his ankle scraping against the denim of Enjolras’ jeans. “You don’t even have to try. Pens naturally just line up to be chewed upon by your perfect teeth. Did you even need braces?”

Enjolras snorts, tugging gently on the ring of Grantaire’s notebook, watching has he lets it slide from under the tip of his pencil and into Enjolras’ hands.

He flips it, so that he can read it better, placing the notebook on top of his textbook, skimming captions and margin notes, looking over swirls and shapes, rendered in shaded and particular detail (despite being nothing more than a sphere, or a cube, or a cone). And then he goes back to the words, finding that most of them are addressed to him, specifically.

_You really need to stop chewing on your lowerlip when you read. It’s painful for us mere mortals to watch._

_You also need to stop frowning so much—you can’t argue with a textbook, I know, I’ve tried._

_And succeeded._

_It’s a gift._

“Are you going to start writing notes to me?” Enjolras glances up from the page to find Grantaire regarding him with an amused tilt of his head, his chin finding its place in his palm once again.

“Well, if you’re going to nose through my things and write in them _anyway_ , I might as well start addressing my innermost thoughts to you, then, hm?” The turn of his mouth is something else, a cross between accusing him of being a _nosy little shit_ (which is his new title since Grantaire found his book, and he’s gotten rather fond of it) and a fondness that Enjolras doesn’t normally see on the faces of others when they look at him. Passion—yes. He admits he could start a riot in a convent of nuns. Respect—definitely. When Combeferre had admitted that Enjolras had earned his highest praises, he’d been flattered.

But a fondness like that?

He’s only ever seen it when Marius spoke of Cosette—of course it _had_ been missing the element of _why are you such a nosy bastard_ , because Cosette and Marius don’t exactly function like that. And it is distinctly a _Grantaire_ sort of look, his eyes bright with humour.

Something twitches under his ribs, like fingers gripping onto the bones, pushing them outward to make room for a feeling inflating in his chest. “You make a fair point,” Enjolras replies, knowing that the pause had been too long to be any sort of relevant to the conversation, but saying it anyway even as his bones break and heal to compensate for the change within him. He pushes the chair away from him as he stands, grabbing Grantaire by the collar and pulling him up, a pencil clattering to the floor in a world that doesn’t matter in this moment.

And he kisses him—nothing chaste, changing the dynamics of whatever they were before—, a kiss that means something, a kiss that hollows out his skeleton and replaces the marrow with something _electric_ , something burning. “I think we should go out,” Enjolras says, appreciating the dilation of Grantaire’s pupils. “To dinner. Studying is very limiting.”

“Are you _sure?_ ” Grantaire blinks, his eyes trying to adjust to the sudden kiss and then sudden absence. “Are you sure you don’t just want to stay in?”

Enjolras just smiles, letting go of Grantaire’s shirt, and watching as he fumbles to organise everything into stacks before he trails over Enjolras towards the front door.

He brings his fingers to his lips when he thinks Enjolras can’t see.

-

Grantaire is going to die.

Everyone dies eventually—that is a requirement for life, after all, the abyss at the end of the tunnel—but Grantaire is pretty sure he’s going to die soon and Enjolras is going to be the one that kills him. Not by any fault of his own, but more by just being himself, all the time, shining brightly enough to cast light everywhere he goes.

(He brings his fingers to his lips again, fighting the urge to wet them with his tongue.)

Grantaire suspects that his death is sooner than he thinks, because Enjolras was born for Paris at nighttime. The shadows of the evening prevent nothing, caressing the glowing skin of his cheeks with gentle hands, refusing to hollow out his face as it does with everyone else. The breeze tousles his hair, delicately, because _goddamn everything_ , everything loves to bestow affection upon Enjolras.

“What inspired you to drop your studies and run?” Grantaire doesn’t even try for the pretense that he had been studying too.

Enjolras heaves a sigh from his nose, his nostrils flaring with the breath. “How superfluous do you want this answer?”

“As little as possible please,” his heart blocks his throat like a stone jammed in a pipe.

“You inspired me to drop my studies and run.”

“I’m a terrible influence,” and his heart eases back into his chest. “Sorry about that. Looks like your grades will just have to suffer from your distraction.”

“Hardly,” Enjolras snorts, his hands tucked into his pocket and he looks like a god-made-flesh as he always does—but there’s something about the nighttime that brings out every movement he makes and amplifies it. It’s beautiful and terrible. Something to behold, really. “My grades will be fine.”

But he stops walking, turning toward Grantaire, completely heedless of the other pedestrians that have to go around them, like a stream splitting around a rock. “Grantaire,” he says, and he feels like he’s being trusted, inflated, a balloon set free among the winds of the atmosphere, waiting to pop or deflate, slowly coming back down, a shadow of what he’d been before—but for now, he’s full and desperate.

“Enjolras,” he replies, trying for the same gravity and succeeding only in sounding sarcastic.

His nostrils flare again, and the people flow around them. But—suddenly—they don’t matter in the slightest. “I love you,” is what he says, delivered without any sort of finesse, or effort, as if the words are something easy. Typed within a book—hardly written at all.

“What?” His hands are too cold to sweat in the pockets of his jacket and so he pulls them out. Enjolras takes them—and he can’t manage to grip back with any sort of conviction.

“I love you,” Enjolras repeats—and this time there is something underneath it, and Grantaire can picture the flowing script of Enjolras’ handwriting, carving the words upon his skin.

(And Grantaire can’t breathe.)

“No,” Grantaire drops his hands, limp and numb, all the feeling rushing toward his heart. “No, nono, no, you can’t say that, you really—you can’t. Uh.”

Enjolras cocks his head, blinking slowly. “What’s got you so distressed?” He sounds stung, but his face his smooth, like marble.

“You can’t say the l-word to me,” and he’s panicking, he can feel the panic coming up from his bones and needling out of his skin. “You can’t, Enjolras you—shit. You can’t fall in love with half-a-person,” he needs a drink. He hasn’t needed a drink this badly since he tried going back to church when he was eighteen. “The only thing you’ve fallen in love with has been the way I tell a story.”

And so Grantaire shakes off the hand that tries to stop him and he backs away, falling into the stream of people, fighting the urge to sprint.

Because that’s what you do when the going gets tough (and unmanagable and _too much_ ).

You get going.

-

The surface of the bar shines in the dim lighting, polished carefully by someone who cares very much what happens in this establishment. Grantaire taps against it, his nails clicking out a staccato rhythm to a song that Enjolras likes—though he can’t remember the title.

He can’t really think at all, except for the _tap-tap-taptaptap-taptap_ of his nails.

(Grantaire had once prided himself on honesty—

—and yet here, he has misrepresented himself to Enjolras.)

“Are you just going to sit there, son?” The bartender can’t be too much older than he is, but he calls him _son_ anyway, and Grantaire looks up at him and weighs his options. ( _What am I doing?_ He thinks to himself. _What have I done?_ )

He brings his fingers to his lips and runs his tongue across them.

And then he sighs.

“A fifth of whiskey,” he says. “Please.”

The bartender nods.

And Grantaire stops lying—to himself, to Enjolras, to everyone.

And he becomes exactly what he’s always been.

Half-a-person, filled with booze.

-

**_5 Missed Calls_ **

_“You’re reached Grantaire! Roses are red, violets are blue, leave your name and number, and I’ll get back to you. I’m not a poet, but I think this is clever. Even if you don’t, leave a message anyway. Cheers!”_

**_6 Missed Calls_ **


End file.
